Pros
The review really depends on which store branch you actually work at, because there are tons of safeway stores across the country, so you'll get varying reviews. Benefits, pay, time off, flexible schedule, and nice social atmosphere with the store i worked at.
Cons
After a few new contracts in the last 6-7 years, the pay and benefits have gotten pretty bad. The worst is the salary raise, which turned into a longer tiered system. In other words, newer employees or newly promoted ones would take longer to get to maximum pay. This particularly affected being a casher, since that position is one of highest paid. The union is utterly useless and most employees despise being forced to paying a monthly union membership. Promotions are usually based on seniority, but i've witnessed many cases where someone ( attractive female) was easily promoted within a few months of work. Management is a varying experience. Over time different managers/supervisors come and go, therefore, sometimes you get ones who are difficult to work with. The customer service they had us do got irritating after a while. Most of it was doable such as greeting with a smile and thanking them for their patronage. Mostly everyone hated thanking a customer by their last name and I really thought it was unnecessary. 99% of customers never really gave a crap about being thanked by their last name anyway. Age old equipment at the cashier counters. They changed those electronic payment (credit card) kiosks with different models twice during my time there and they would always malfunction. I actually got a chance to talk to one of the company reps who supplied safeway with them and they said were using the cheapest ones. You get what you paid for. Training was really lacking in certain areas, especially with alcohol and tobacco. The company never gave anyone any kind of formal training on spotting fake id's. Just check the date of birth and that was it. Same thing goes for people using stolen credit cards.